


i'll give you a hidden thrill

by April (featherx)



Series: but in the end I will always come back to you [3]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 07:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10531788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherx/pseuds/April
Summary: Junmyeon wakes up in a castle bed, and a girl standing over him. (Royalty AU)





	

**Author's Note:**

> whoops this was late. (thanks to C again for bumping the royalty au up in priority!)
> 
> prompt taken from unspokenend.tumblr.com/post/158025611716/ - "You’re a princess that wants to escape castle life and I happen to be just traveling the world, totally not running away from bad people or nothin’"

Junmyeon looks up and, for a moment, thinks he sees an angel guiding him up to Heaven. In reality, which he gets back to in a couple of seconds, he realizes it’s just a girl staring down at him curiously. “Um,” he greets, “hello, there.”

The girl backs away, not alarmed, but not relaxed, either. “Hi,” she replies, wrapping a strange orange scarf a little tighter around her neck. “Who are you? We found you looking dead just outside our gates. Do you have—” She stumbles over the more high-class words—“Do you have any business here?”

Junmyeon sits up, raising his hands when the girl takes a cautious step back. “Won’t hurt you, miss,” he says lightly, lowering his hands when the girl’s eyebrows do too. “Caught in a bad crowd just before I was about to leave the village. Did you take me in? Thank you.” He takes a quick look around the room he’s in – it’s strangely well-furnished, and the chair by the desk looks like it costs more than his life. “Can I ask where I am, miss?”

“It’s just Max,” she vaguely introduces, dipping her head in a curt bow, before replying, “You’re in the castle’s guest room. May I have your name?”

A bit of silence.

“Castle?” He squeaks out. “Max? You don’t mean, like – the princess, right?”

Max stares at him blankly. “Did you think of someone else?”

“Your Highness,” Junmyeon stammers, about to fling the blankets off of him, stand up, and take a very deep bow, but his ribs scream in protest and instead of jumping to his feet, he falls flat on his face, the wooden floor unforgiving against a bruise just above his right eyebrow. “Oh, _ow_ …”

“Ah! A-Are you alright? You shouldn’t be jumping all over the place, are you mad?” Max exclaims, bending down to help him up by taking his arms, pale hands under tanned biceps. She flinches away, almost by instinct, and accidentally grips his arms a bit too hard. Junmyeon lets out a pained noise that might have come from a dying animal. “I-I’m sorry! Can you get up? Please don’t die, I wanted to talk to you more!”

“I’m – flattered, Your Highness,” Junmyeon groans, managing to get back up on the bed, rubbing his forehead tenderly. He really wishes he had been a little smarter and not have been attacked by that stupid gang right before he was supposed to leave the village. They’d delayed him quite a bit already. “Er – ah – I’m sorry I had to be of such trouble to you. I’ll get going—”

Max stares at him. Her hand is still on his arm, Junmyeon vaguely notices. “But you’re injured. Look at you, you couldn’t even get off the bed.” She looks down, sees that she’s still touching him, and pats his arm lightly. “Stay a while. Just so you can heal, then we can send you on your way, right?”

“With all due respect, Your Highness, a common peasant shouldn’t even be lying on this bed right now,” Junmyeon protests weakly, but he has a feeling that Max isn’t the sort of person to let go of what she wants. She looks at him, then shrugs and stands up to head to a different part of the room. “Your Highness? Please, I wouldn’t want to be a bother – or, well, more than I already have, anyway…”

“You’re not a bother. You’re the most interesting thing to me that’s happened all month,” Max says neutrally, taking out some strange-looking bottle and a small bag of cotton from inside a drawer. Junmyeon looks at her, remembers he’s probably not supposed to do that in front of royalty, and looks away. Max snorts in amusement. “You can _look_ at me if you want, mister.”

“Kim Junmyeon, please,” Junmyeon hurriedly introduces, managing a half-bow from his sitting position.

Max smiles absently, unscrewing the cap off the bottle, and pouring a little of the liquid inside onto a piece of cotton. “Can you lean in a little?” She asks, looking at his face – probably at the bruise he’d irritated earlier, if what she’s looking at is any possible guess.

“I’m sorry to ask, but… what’s that?” Junmyeon inquires timidly, leaning in and trying not to jerk in surprise when Max presses the cold cotton against his bruise. “Y… Your Highness?”

“Bruise ointment. You’ve never seen it before or something?” Max replies. Junmyeon tries not to show his smile at the princess speaking casually with him. He _is_ a peasant, but he figures the princess would be a little more ladylike or something, considering she never shows up in the newspapers, or any kind of news at all. “Oh, or do they not sell these in the village pharmacies?” Max continues softly, making eye contact with Junmyeon curiously.

Junmyeon coughs. Their faces are perhaps a bit too close than considered proper, but he decides not to mention it, considering Max doesn’t seem at all perturbed. He’ll consider that a good thing. “In all honesty, I don’t think the pharmacy stocks many actual medicines at all. Certainly not the royal family’s fault, of course, not at all,” he stutters hastily, even though everyone knows all too well that yes, it _is_ the royalty’s fault for not paying attention to the peasants they rule over.

Max looks him over, not removing her face. It’s becoming somewhat disconcerting, and only gets worse when Junmyeon realizes that her eyes are a very striking blue. Also, she has a funny spray of freckles over the bridge of her nose, which is odd, because she’s so pale that it doesn’t look like she’s gone out of the castle since she was born. “I’ll tell my mom,” she says, after a short while. “This is the first time I’ve heard about life outside of the castle. Can you tell me more, Junmyeon? I can call you that, right?”

“Whatever Your Highness wants,” Junmyeon says, instead of any actual agreement.

Max’s eyebrows rise again. “Okay, Junmyeon,” she allows. “You mentioned a ‘bad crowd…’ What’s that all about? Are you a criminal?”

“Probably not?”

The cotton disappears, which is a shame. Junmyeon had found it quite soothing. Max, on the other hand, looks down at him somewhat sternly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I was trying to get food for my family,” Junmyeon explains, wincing a little when he realizes how stupid he’s going to sound. “I was planning to leave the village, see, so I wanted to leave them with something good. But then I got caught by the gang I was trying to steal from, and they sort of… beat me up…”

Max crosses her arms. “For starters, why would you even steal from a – a _gang?_ Aren’t those bad groups of people or something?”

Junmyeon tries not to flush in embarrassment. He probably does. “Um – well – I was running out of time, and their base was unlocked, so I thought…”

The princess stands up (back straight, chin up, chest out – Junmyeon doesn’t think he’s seen such perfect posture before) and replaces the bottle and cotton back in the drawer. “It’s fine. You can stay here as long as you like, but I want to hear about the outside world in exchange.” Max looks at him, cocking her head a little. “Are there any handsome guys?”

“You’re talking to one right now, Your Highness,” Junmyeon responds. Then he _really_ blushes. “Wait, sorry. I meant – um, well, it depends on your definition of ‘handsome’—”

“Please. I know you’re handsome, I’m not _blind_ ,” Max says cheekily, stepping over to pat his arm like she had done earlier. Is it a habit? It’s a very touchy habit, Junmyeon thinks. He supposes he doesn’t _really_ mind. “Mom has been saying I should find myself a king soon. Or I might have to be set up with the prince from the neighboring kingdom, and that sounds downright _terrible_. Where’s the romance in an arranged marriage?”

“Searching for romance in these times is a very – ambitious thing to do,” Junmyeon remarks blandly. He knows for sure his parents had been wanting him to marry a socialite girl he hadn’t liked the looks nor the personality of. It hadn’t exactly been the main reason he’d decided to leave the village, but it had certainly helped. “Not that I’m saying that what you’re doing is wrong, Your Highness, but—”

Max sighs. “Don’t worry, my mom says that all the time, too. Hey, can you maybe marry me or something? Just so I won’t have to marry that dumb prince? You seem like an okay guy.” She blinks. “Or do you already have a girlfriend in a faraway village? Is that why you’re leaving?”

“Um, nothing like that. I just wanted to get a better job in one of the richer villages,” Junmyeon replies. And then, when her words actually sink in, he splutters out a, “I’m sorry, um, what? Did you just propose to me, Your Highness?”

Max pouts. “Is that bad?”

“No, but it certainly skips a lot of steps most couples take before they propose…”

“If it’s not bad, it should be fine, then,” Max declares firmly. “I’ll wait ‘til you’re a little more healed up, Junmyeon. Then I’ll tell my mom, and then we can get married in a few weeks’ time. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Junmyeon tries to ignore the way Max’s royal accent curls over his foreign name, and how it sends a shiver down his spine. “Er, well…” He _supposes_ it doesn’t sound like a life of torture or anything, but he barely knows the princess. It feels like an arranged marriage all on its own. “Why don’t we get to know each other a little more, Your Highness? I mean, I don’t know much about you, and—”

Max claps her hands excitably, her orange scarf flopping, and a shine coming over her eyes. “That’s perfect! And you can bring me out to the village and take me to those peasant restaurants and then you can show me what an inn looks like! Can I tell Mom yet?”

“Ah…” Junmyeon smiles anyway. Her excitement is, oddly enough, somewhat endearing. And even though he’d been planning to leave, maybe he could stick around for a little while – but only to get acquainted with the princess. And maybe when Max gets tired of either him or the peasants’ lives, he can carry on with his original plan. “Sure, then? Are you sure Her Majesty won’t get angry?”

“You kidding? I don’t care if she does,” Max says, then barrels out the door without a second thought.

Junmyeon thinks he certainly doesn’t mind if he does end up staying a bit longer than he planned, though.


End file.
